[88]It does seem to me that there needs to be an intermediate society. If not, as light increases, all the excesses of the abolition party will not prevent humane and conscientious men from joining it.
Pray what is there in Cincinnati to satisfy one whose mind is awakened on this subject? No one can have the system of slavery brought before him without an irrepressible desire to do something, and what is there to be done?
On September 29, 1836, while Professor Stowe was still absent in Europe, his wife gave birth to twin daughters, Eliza and Isabella, as she named them; but Eliza Tyler and Harriet Beecher, as her husband insisted they should be called, when, upon reaching New York, he was greeted by the joyful news. His trip from London in the ship Gladiator had been unusually long, even for those days of sailing vessels, and extended from November 19, 1836, to January 20, 1837.
During the summer of 1837 Mrs. Stowe suffered much from ill health, on which account, and to relieve her from domestic cares, she was sent to make a long visit at Putnam with her brother, Rev. William Beecher. While here she received a letter from her husband, in which he says:--
We all of course feel proper indignation at the doings of last General Assembly, and shall treat them with merited contempt. This alliance between the old school (Presbyterians) and slaveholders will make more abolitionists than anything that has been done yet.
In December Professor Stowe went to Columbus with the extended educational report that he had devoted the summer to preparing; and in writing from there to his wife he says:--
